Phoenix victim's family questions why man was free

Mental hospital halted search; escapee now a murder suspect

by JJ Hensley - Sept. 28, 2011 12:00 AMThe Arizona Republic

Jesus Rincon Murrieta disappeared in May from the Arizona State Hospital after he ripped the security badge off the neck of an employee and ran from the mental-health facility near 24th and Van Buren streets.

But just one day after he scrambled from guards at the hospital, administrators canceled the missing-persons report on Murrieta after determining he had been a voluntary patient and was not a danger to himself or others.

In late August, he was arrested, suspected of slitting the throat of 32-year-old April Mott at a Phoenix apartment.

While Murrieta sits in a Maricopa County jail, four months after leaving the hospital, Mott's family now asks whether more could have been done.

Murrietalikely arrived at the Arizona State Hospital as an involuntary patient through a court order, but when that order expired, his treatment became voluntary. If staff had sought to renew a court order, his involuntary status at the mental-health facility would have triggered a more robust response to his escape.

The hospital's initial response treated Murrieta's departure as an escape, prompting staff to file a missing-persons report with Phoenix police. That report was rescinded a day later after hospital administrators and doctors determined Murrieta was in the facility voluntarily.

Internally, the state hospital continued to treat Murrieta's departure as an escape and increased security to prevent other patients from fleeing.

If the hospital had continued to treat Murrieta's departure as an escape to the outside world and left the missing-persons report in place, police would have known of his connection with the hospital if they encountered Murrieta, which they did six times between mid-May and late August.

Hospital staff could have also sought an involuntary mental-health evaluation, a request the law allows any interested party to file under the belief that a person poses a danger to himself or others. Murrieta assaulted a patient and injured a security officer in the months before he fled.

One week after he escaped, Murrieta followed a hospital worker to Mesa on the light rail and threatened to kill her husband. A hospital administrator contacted Phoenix transit police and advised them of Murrieta's use of the light rail following the stalking incident, according to records, but the incident did not prompt hospital staff to re-classify Murrieta's potential danger or seek his involuntary commitment.

Any of these - an escape, a missing-persons report, a request for involuntary evaluation - could have prompted police to treat Murrieta differently during six later encounters with him, but officers who encountered him on the street were unaware of Murrieta's history with the hospital. Every time police caught up with Murrieta - once in a stolen-car chase, another time on suspicion of trying to run out of a store without paying for beer in another - he was cited and released because his low-level crimes did not warrant his being held without bond.

Mott's mother said she wishes more had been done.

"I believe April could still be alive today," Monika Vinquist said.

Treatment history

Murrieta was a voluntary patient at the Arizona State Hospital, but that was probably not always the case, police records and interviews indicate.

His contact with the mental-health system began sometime within the last two years in Tucson, where police took him to St. Mary's Hospital after he attempted suicide, according to his grandmother, Maria Alegria.

It takes a court order for treatment to transfer a mental-health patient from a local facility such as St. Mary's to the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix. Because of this, it is possible Murrieta was under such an order when he first landed at the state hospital, though hospital officials refused to discuss the case with The Republic, citing privacy.

Those orders expire after a year, said Phoenix attorney Charles Arnold, whose landmark lawsuit helped to establish Arizona's mental-health system years ago. But patients often require more treatment and the court orders are frequently renewed by caregivers or other interested parties, Arnold said.

If Murrieta was under such an order, it may not have been renewed, based on statements hospital employees gave to Phoenix police investigating the harassment claim filed against Murrieta by the state hospital employee. Without an order in place, Murrieta would have been considered a voluntary patient. But even voluntary patients are supposed to go through a discharge process before leaving the hospital.

State hospital CEO Cory Nelson, who started Aug. 1, said he could not talk specifically about the Murrieta case. But in general, Nelson said, the hospital's obligation to report patients who leave against the advice of doctors extends only to those who are involuntarily committed.

"If they choose to leave their treatment environment, that would be their choice," Nelson said. "If someone leaves the facility and they don't really have another attachment to another person . . . we contact law enforcement and let them know that the individual has left the hospital."

Hospital records indicate that administrators considered moving Murrieta to a group home twice before he escaped, but he thwarted those attempts by attacking another patient and injuring an officer.

Nelson said factors such as a patient's behavior and tendency toward violence are considered when staff members are determining whether to request a court-ordered evaluation on a voluntary patient, a step that could lead to an involuntary commitment. But that type of aggressive behavior isn't unique to a mental hospital, Nelson said.

"Those type of behaviors may not have anything to do with a mental illness," Nelson said. "They have to evaluate whether those types of behaviors are the result of a mental illness or the result of a person being a difficult individual."

Nelson said the hospital's goal is to develop a discharge plan for every patient, whether they are in the hospital voluntarily or involuntarily, but some patients disregard medical advice just as they can from any physician.

In Murrieta's case, hospital administrators decided he was a voluntary patient, despite initially chasing him and reporting him missing to police.

When the hospital rescinded the missing-persons report, they also effectively severed the most visible link between Murrieta and the mental facility.

Hospital escape

The initial response to Murrieta's escape from the hospital was swift, according to a hospital report. That report, which was redacted to prevent identification of the patient involved, does not directly name Murrieta, but The Republic has determined the document pertains to Murrieta's departure. Security officers chased Murrieta after he fled the building, but retreated when he threw rocks at a hospital staff member's truck as it trailed Murrieta down Fillmore Street, according to the hospital's escape report.

Within two hours of Murrieta's escape, the interim CEO of the hospital wrote to a doctor about Murrieta's assaulting and injuring a patient in the spring when he was about to be transferred to a group home, causing the transfer to be put on hold.

Yet efforts to locate him were halted by 7:30 in the morning after the state hospital's physicians and administrators determined Murrieta was a voluntary patient and not a danger to himself or others, according to documents The Republic obtained from a public-records request.

Froio wrote that Murrieta was on no medication and that when he was assessed after attacking a patient and injuring a guard, hospital officials decided he was not a candidate for involuntary admission.

- Inadequate training: The officer whose badge was stolen admitted he did not know the emergency alert codes for an escape which would have caused officers to close the hospital's front gate.

- Inattentive staff: Murrieta ran by two staff members who thought it odd that someone would be jogging at that time of night. Both staff members "immediately stopped and stood still when realizing it was a patient who entered the lobby and made no attempt to alert security."

- Improper response to escapes: Staff failed to relay the patient's correct name and an accurate description of what Murrieta was wearing to security. They did not mention an employee's badge was stolen. They made multiple calls to security to ask about Murrieta instead of waiting for security to complete their search. Following the escape, the hospital took action based on its internal report. It posted extra security officers in the lobby of the civil unit, deactivated employee badges on some doors out of the unit, added barrier fencing near the lobby door and educated staff about how to handle such situations, according to the records.

Evaluating patients

Despite Murrieta's voluntary status at the state hospital, administrators had another option to treat Murrieta if they believed he was a danger to himself or others, said Arnold, the attorney from Phoenix.

Arizona statutes are purposely broad to allow "any interested person" to file a petition for an involuntary evaluation if the petitioner believes someone is a danger to themselves or others, Arnold said.

A patient who leaves a mental-health facility without a discharge plan and goes on to harass and threaten a hospital employee, as Murrieta is alleged to have done days after leaving the facility, would fit those criteria, Arnold said.

E-mail correspondence from the hospital indicates that high-level staff members, including Froio, the interim CEO, were getting updates on Murrieta's alleged harassment of a hospital housekeeper into early June.

The housekeeper told police that Murrieta approached her on the light rail as she rode home to Mesa one afternoon and sat next to her before following the housekeeper to her apartment complex.

"One day we will be together even if I have to get a gun and kill your husband," Murrieta told the housekeeper, according to police records. "Don't think I won't do it."

The housekeeper told police that Murrieta called her that night and followed her home again on the train the following day.

"Had anyone at the hospital believed that this guy was either dangerous to himself, or others, or, most importantly, persistently and acutely disabled, then they could have (and should have) filed a petition for involuntary treatment," Arnold wrote in an e-mail to The Arizona Republic.

Nelson, without specifically addressing Murrieta's case, said that every mental treatment is unique, and cautioned that it would be a mistake to automatically consider anyone leaving the hospital to be a dangerous person.

Run-ins with police

After the harassment complaint was filed, Phoenix police picked up Murrieta on several occasions:

- On June 30, this time on suspicion of breaking out windows at a strip center near 16th and Portland streets.

- Four days later, when officers responded to the same scene after a security guard found Murrieta's backpack in a truck on the property and assumed Murrieta had tried to steal the truck when he broke the windows out of the building. The responding officer asked that Murrieta be charged with trying to steal the truck.

- On July 11, officers arrested Murrieta while driving a truck that had been reported stolen from a casino earlier in the month. According to police reports, when the officer asked Murrieta how he got the truck, Murrieta replied: "I stole it and kicked someone's ass to take it."

In each of these cases, Murrieta was released after being cited or booked. In none of the reports on the incidents is there a mention of Murrieta's escape from the state hospital or the open harassment complaint.

Police didn't see Murrieta again until late August, when they responded to a pair of complaints at Mott's Phoenix apartment. Both incidents ended without any arrest, and the reports list Murrieta only as an additional subject.

But Phoenix police again arrested Murrieta on Aug. 28 after employees of a Circle K near 32nd Street and Thomas Road alleged that he tried to steal a case of Budweiser. Murrieta was cited and released for shoplifting.

Any of those incidents on their own would not have been enough to raise red flags, and Murrieta's petty crime spree did not prompt any one in law enforcement to connect the dots.

"I think that's what happens a lot on the street," said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman. "We run into people (with mental-health concerns), and short of a court-ordered hold on them, there's nothing (officers) can do."

Final arrest

Phoenix police arrested Murrieta for the last time just before 8 a.m. on Aug. 30. Officers responded to the apartment complex where Mott lived near 32nd Street and Osborn Road.

An anonymous caller phoned police to report a possible homicide in an upstairs apartment.

Officers would later find out that a woman in the complex made the call after a male friend went by Mott's apartment and saw a body wrapped in sheet on the floor near a puddle of blood. Someone was asleep in a nearby bed.

When police arrived, Murrieta answered the door and told them nothing was going on, according to the police report: "When asked if anyone else was in the apartment, Jesus replied, 'April is here but she's dead.' "

Murrieta's court-appointed attorney said he plans to ask a judge to evaluate his client's competency to stand trial.